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Almost 17 million euros has been paid by the Romanian state until now, to former inmates who won compensation at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), the general director of the National Penitentiary Administration (ANP), Dan Halchin informed on Monday, at the presentation of ANP's 2023 activity report.
"In the last 15 years, 160,000 persons deprived of liberty have been detained in the penitentiary system. Of these, in the last 15 years, 4,300 former persons deprived of liberty have won compensation at the ECHR in the average amount of 4,000 - 5,000 euros, 4,300 compared to 160,000, and the total amount that the Romanian state has paid, up to this moment, from the records that the National Penitentiary Administration has at its disposal, is 16.8 million euros. (...) The percentage cases won at the ECHR is in the 2-3% range. (...) It has been circulated many times that the Romanian state pays hundreds of millions of euros, which is not true," said Halchin.
He said that last year the ANP had among its priorities the fight against overcrowding and recalled that the Government approved a memorandum with measures to expand the penitentiary infrastructure.
Last year, approximately 1,000 fugitives were repatriated.
"The conditions in the Romanian penitentiary system are nowhere near as they are claimed or blamed by some people who are in the scope of a criminal trial or another. It can be concluded that, in the hypothesis that the conditions of detention would have been inadequate or if we had done something incorrect in the penitentiary system, the international courts in the countries we cooperate with would not have made the decision to repatriate such a significant number of people to serve their sentence in Romania," argued Dan Halchin
